


break the rules

by ghosthunter



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, F/F, F/M, Multi, Rule 63, andre has two sugar daddies, self indulgent tire fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-25 10:53:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12034410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghosthunter/pseuds/ghosthunter
Summary: She’s six feet tall at sixteen, and they make her prove herself, over and over and over again.





	break the rules

**Author's Note:**

> i had a bad day, and i was like, fuck it, i'm gonna write whatever i feel like. please enjoy.
> 
> (as per usual: beta by lanie, cheerleading by donya, dumpster fires by me)

Not a lot of women play in the NHL. It’s just how things are - hockey’s not considered a sport for women, especially not for women to play with men. Her family plays hockey though - her dad, when he was young, her older brother now. She has siblings; she knows how to take a hit. She wants to play with the boys. She wants to go overseas and play in the NHL.

Marcia won’t be the first, and it’s not totally out of reach. She’s six feet tall at sixteen, and they make her prove herself, over and over and over again. She scores five goals in eight games, but she also collects 41 penalty minutes. She makes the elite league, but can’t get more than ten minutes of ice time per game. She scores anyway.

She gets drafted. She gets fucking drafted in the first round - near the end, sure, but it’s still the first round. She doesn’t play in America that year, but stays in Sweden, scores more goals and gets in fewer fights. She’s good enough by the time she’s twenty she captains Sweden’s World Juniors team.

The Washington Capitals have only ever had one other woman on the team before they draft her, and that’s Alex Semin. Alex Semin, who scores four hat tricks in Marcia’s rookie season, but who deals with unbelievable amounts of criticism for her play, how sometimes she’s hot, and sometimes she’s cold - which, okay, everyone plays that way.

She has to fight for everything, same as Alex. If she gets knocked down - and god forbid they knock her down - she has to get up and play harder, faster. Every game, she has to prove that she’s worthy of playing in the pros.

Her second season, she ties for third most points on the team, more than Nicke even, but not by much. She feels like she’s on fire, like she can do anything.

Three things happen the summer between her second and third year pro: first, they draft Filipa Forsberg, and she’s excited that not only will there be another girl on the team, but another Swede, because sure, Nicke is great, but he’s also a guy, and some days she feels like if she has to see a single other man in front of her face she’s going to start screaming, even if he is speaking her native language and she doesn’t have to think so fucking hard just to have a conversation.

The rest of it is not as good. The second thing that happens is that Alex doesn’t re-sign with the Caps, and suddenly Marcia’s the only girl on a team because it’s unlikely a freshly-drafted player is gonna make the roster. And it sucks, realizing she’s going to be alone.

Not as alone as she ends up in Sweden, on a bus, because the NHL goes into a lockout. At least she’s still playing hockey, but she misses _her_ team. Everyone’s suddenly speaking Swedish and she doesn’t have to think so hard but none of these guys are her guys.

It’s a relief to finally go home, to curl up on Nicke’s couch, to bully him into letting her French braid his hair while they drink and Nicke tells her about spending the lockout in Russia, playing with Dynamo and Ovi. She tells him about getting left at a gas station with all her gear when the lockout ended.

“Not exactly safe,” she tells Nicke, running her fingers through his hair to knock the braid loose.

“They knew you’d kick the ass of anyone who tried to touch you,” Nicke tells her. She tugs on his hair, and he laughs.

Forsberg gets traded before she ever plays a game with the Capitals, and Marcia’s alone again. Not that she wasn’t alone before, because Forsberg was still in Sweden, but - it’s not like she doesn’t get along with the guys. But it’s alienating to be the only woman in a locker room. They’re not staring her down while she’s changing, and she’s not looking at them, because they’re all professionals, but she never strips completely down. It’s uncomfortable.

Though truth be told, even if there were another woman in the room, she probably still wouldn’t. She’s seen plenty of dick though, because some people she’s not going to name (Ovi) don’t like to wear clothes unless they absolutely have to.

After they flame out in the playoffs, she goes home to Sweden. The Capitals draft Andrea Burakovsky, but Marcia doesn’t hold her breath. Unless a trade happens, she’ll still be the only girl on the team the next season.

They always ask her stupid questions, she thinks. What’s it like to be a girl, the only girl on the team. She wants to talk about hockey, pretend she doesn’t speak English until they ask her something worthwhile. Stop asking her what her skin care routine is, if she has a boyfriend at home. It’s stupid, she doesn’t have time for it.

Nicke laughs at her when she complains, out to dinner together on the road. She can pretend if she wants, he tells her, but they’re never going to treat her like anything but a girl playing a man’s game. It pisses her off and she almost gets up and leaves when he says it, too sharp, too cutting, too not what she wants to hear.

“Fuck you,” she says to Nicke, and throws back the last of her glass of wine.

“I don’t mean it in a hateful way,” he says, trying to soothe. He’s not wrong, and she knows he’s not. She hates to hear it out loud because she wants to be more than that. He orders her another glass of wine.

When Burakovsky - Burky, the boys end up calling her - comes to the states, she lives with Nicke. He’s older, he’s more established. Of course they’re not going to give this rookie straight to Marcia even though it’s her fourth season.

Andrea might be a walking disaster. She gets pulled over for speeding in Nicke’s car just after she comes to DC from Hershey, scores a goal in her first NHL game, and seems to spend half her energy flirting with Willy and Latts.

In a way, it’s nice to have the scrutiny off of her. It’s not nice to fade into the background in spite of scoring 20 goals that same season. It doesn’t take the sting out of getting knocked out of the playoffs in the second round, but at least now she’s not the only one they’re asking stupid beauty and diet questions, and about boys. She goes home when the season’s over, spends her time working out.

The next season, Andrea moves in with Willy and Latts which is bizarre to Marcia, because why the fuck would she want to spend _even more_ time with them when they’re living in each other’s pockets most days.

“Maybe she’s sleeping with one of them. Both of them,” Nicke says. Her head snaps up and she’s glaring at him before she realizes he’s grinning. Sometimes, Nicke’s jokes are not funny.

“Don’t say that shit,” she tells him. “She isn’t. She wouldn’t. It’s like. It’s against NHL girl code.”

“There’s code?” Nicke asks. He flicks a piece of popcorn at her where she’s curled up on the other end of his couch, her feet tucked underneath her, the bowl of popcorn between them and some shitty action flick playing on Netflix on Nicke’s tv.

“Look, you can’t - do you know what they’d say, what they’d ask if I slept with someone on the team?” she asks. “You get that reputation and it just. It sticks, you know, and nobody respects you. Not that they respect me anyway, even though - “

“Mackan,” Nicke says, and flicks another piece of popcorn at her.

“You absolutely would not respect me in the morning, Nicke,” she says. “If I slept with - I don’t know who I’d sleep with.”

“You don’t sleep with anyone, so that’s irrelevant,” Nicke says. She blushes, and he looks at her a little wide eyed.

“That’s not true,” she says, her voice a whisper. “I just. I’m discreet.” Nicke bursts out laughing, but his cheeks are red. She rubs her hands over her face. “Nicke, please. Don’t.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says. For a while, only the sound of their popcorn crunching hangs between them. “Who would you sleep with, though. If you did.”

“Nicke,” she says, turning to glare at him.

“Sorry,” he says, but he’s laughing. “I get it. I wouldn’t sleep with anyone on the team either.”

“Oh fuck off,” she says, and this time it’s her flicking popcorn at Nicke.

Andrea starts tagging along with them when they go out for dinner while they’re on roadies, because, she says, she’s tired of Willy and Latts giving her shit about her English or the boys that she flirts with when they go out to bars. She even comes and hangs out in Marcia’s room at the hotel, and for once it’s nice to sit at the foot of the bed and let someone play with her hair, which Nicke never does, even though she tried to teach him how to braid one time.

“Is it always this exhausting?” Andrea asks one night, out of the blue.

“Is what?” she asks, twisting around to look back at Andrea, sitting on the bed behind her.

“All of this. It didn’t seem this hard in juniors,” Andrea says. “They didn’t ask so many stupid questions.”

“You played with Connor McDavid,” Marcia says. “Nobody cared about you.”

“Wow,” Andrea says. “Wow. We are absolutely not friends anymore.”

“I’m kidding. But it helped, I bet.” She gets up from the floor then and walks over to sit down on the bed, twisting her hair up into a bun and out of her face, watching Andrea.

“I guess,” Andrea says. “It’s just… so much now.”

“It’s being a rookie, I think. You have to prove yourself that much more. Prove you belong here,” Marcia says. She plays with the strings on her hoodie. “Not that that ever stops.”

“Does Nicke make it easier?” Andrea asks. Marcia looks at her, confused, frowning. “I mean. I’m not like. Trying to be nosy or anything. But I hooked up with one of the guys - not even on the same team, you know - in juniors and it kind of made life a living hell so I mean. I respect that you - like, you know, that you’re doing that, but I - how does it not make things harder?”

“What are you talking about?” She’s confused - she’s not sure why Andrea’s admitting now she hooked up with another player while in juniors, but she’s also not sure what Andrea’s trying to say.

“You and Nicke - you know. Right?” Andrea stares her down, her eyes bit. She sort of gestures toward Marcia - no, her sweatshirt, and she looks down to realize that instead of a 90, there’s a 19.

“No, it’s not - that’s not. No,” she sputters.

“But,” Andrea says. “You guys like. He takes you to dinner and you hang out a lot and - “

“No,” Marcia says, and stands up. “We’re friends. It’s not. I wouldn’t - I would never sleep with someone on the team. God, do other people think that I - “

“I don’t know. I just thought - I mean, Tom asked me why I never go out with you guys and I told him I didn’t want to like, third wheel your dates. I guess that explains why he looked at me like I was crazy,” Andrea says, spilling it all out at once.

Marcia throws herself down on the bed, closes her eyes, covers her face with her hands. “Oh my God,” she says.

“Sorry,” Andrea says. She’s biting her nails, and Marcia sits up, moves over to her, and pulls her hands away.

“Stop it,” she says. “Look, Nicke’s been the only other Swede on the team for the entire time I’ve played here. It’s not. It’s not as hard to talk to him? He keeps me from being homesick. It’s not anything but that.”

“You know wearing his number isn’t helping your case, right?”

“That’s not. I wish I could explain that but I spend a lot of time at his place so I guess they got swapped. You wear Tom and Latts’s shit all the time.” Andrea suddenly looks horrified.

“Do you think everyone thinks I’m sleeping with them?” Andrea asks. Marcia makes a face, then moves to sit back down on the edge of the other bed.

“So,” she says. “Nicke made a joke about it, but I don’t know - I don’t think everyone thinks that.”

Andrea sighs. “I just don’t want to be that girl.”

“You’re not,” Marcia says. “We’re here to play hockey and kick ass. That’s all.”

Andrea grins at her. “Fucking right.”

They flame out against the Penguins in the second fucking round, and she’s going into free agency. She’s in a really fucking bad mood, actually, and all she’s hearing is the shit people are saying she can’t do. She’s too soft, she doesn’t shoot enough, she can’t do this, she can’t do that. She’s so frustrated she wants to scream. Or cry, which is worse.

Nicke takes her out and gets her drunk before they leave DC for Sweden for the summer. Andrea’s gone to play in the world cup, but both of them are nursing aches and pains that neither of them are interested in talking about. They’re both in a bad mood, and maybe she’s in the mood to make bad decisions, too, because she leans too much into Nicke’s space, her body gone heavy with alcohol and looking for someone or something to hold her up.

They’re kissing before she realizes what’s happening, and she freezes. But when he starts to pull back, she leans back in, tangles a hand in his hair, and keeps him.

He takes her back to his place and she wakes up curled up against him the next morning. He snores and she feels a nauseating wave of regret flood through her because this - this isn’t want she wanted. Or - maybe she wanted it, but she didn’t know she wanted it, and she didn’t mean for this to happen because it’s so, so inappropriate. He shifts and his hand is on her bare hip, his mouth against her collarbone and - he’s definitely, definitely not going to respect her as a player, now.

She ends up slipping out of his bed and tugging on her clothes from the night before. She doesn’t wake him up, because she can’t face it.

She’s sure he knows she’s gone anyway.

They don’t talk over the summer. Sweden comes in 6th in the world championship and she gets a flurry of angry, upset texts from Andrea. She ends up inviting Andrea to visit, and they spend the time working out, and complaining. She doesn’t tell Andrea she slept with Nicke, or that she hasn’t talked to Nicke since it happened. 

Andrea figures it out.

They’re at dinner the first road game of the new season. Things have been mostly normal, if a little stilted, but chalk that up to playing a road opener against the Penguins and losing, even if Andrea scores the first goal of the entire season and she _wants_ to feel happy about it. It’s the three of them alone - the way Nicke doesn’t quite meet Marcia’s eyes, the way Marcia holds herself at a distance when she’d normally be leaning into Nicke’s attention.

“Oh my God,” she says, her eyes wide. Her hands fly up to cover her mouth after she says it. They’re both looking at her now, both at a level of confusion. “You slept together.”

She’s pretty sure her soul leaves her body. Her entire body feels hot all over. She can’t look at Andrea, and she certainly can’t look at Nicke. She’s going to go back to the hotel, get her bag, and flee to Sweden and never speak to either of them ever again. She’s going to fake her own death. She’s - 

“You know,” Andrea says, after nobody says anything, after they’ve all just sat there in horrified silence. “I thought that you were, you know - I asked Jojo and she said no.”

“Because the answer was no,” Marcia says.

“It was a mistake,” Nicke says. She feels like she’s going to throw up when he says it. “I mean. No. Mackan - not like that. Not like. You’re a mistake or I don’t like you but I know you have this. You have rules, and I didn’t. I shouldn’t have.”

“Please stop talking,” she whispers, and leans her elbows on the table, covering her face. “We were drunk, it was a mistake.”

“Oh my God,” Andrea says again. “Jojo, he’s in love with you and you’re a fucking _idiot_.”

Marcia gets up from the table and leaves. She just fucking leaves. She can’t deal with this. Not tonight, probably not ever - and this is a mistake she’s stuck with. She’s just signed a four year contract. Her life is going to be a living hell.

She walks back to the hotel alone and locks herself in, changing out of her clothes and into pajamas. She considers calling her mom, or calling her sister, or calling anyone and explaining what a colossal fuckup she’s managed to make of this and maybe of herself.

There’s a knock on her door, and she ignores it. She figures it’s either Nicke or Andrea, and she doesn’t want to talk to either one of them currently. Ignoring the knock on the door just means that her phone immediately starts blowing up, so at least she knows that it’s Andrea standing outside. There’s just a dozen texts saying “talk to me” and “please” and poop emojis.

She gets up off the bed and goes and opens the door. She hasn’t been crying, because she doesn’t fucking cry, she won’t let herself cry, not over this, not over anything. She’s not going to be soft in any way, she’s not going to give anyone ammunition. Andrea comes into the room and closes the door behind her, then steers Marcia back to the bed.

“Jojo,” she says sitting down next to her. “You really didn’t know that Nicke like, he’s stupid over you. That’s part of why I thought - you know, last year when I asked if you were together. I didn’t know you didn’t. You didn’t know.”

“I was drunk, and I…I wanted, you know? Because he gets it. He understands how much it fucking sucks to make it to the playoffs every year and -” She stops talking, flapping her hands through the air.

“And?” Andrea prompts.

“And nothing. It’s embarrassing, Burk, I didn’t want - I mean, I wanted, but.” She stops, closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. “I don’t want to be the girl that sleeps with her teammates. I’ve never wanted to be that girl. I mean, fuck, I would prefer that nobody think about me having sex at all, and now -”

“Jojo, stop,” Andrea says. “Come on. Forget about that for a second. You’re an adult, and yeah, it fucking sucks that we have to be careful or whatever and nobody wants to talk about how we play hockey as much as they want to talk about us being novelties as women but - how do you actually feel about Nicke?”

Marcia groans and throws herself backward on the bed, snatching up a pillow and covering her face with it. She can hear Andrea laugh abruptly, then Andrea’s weight settles in next to her, so they’re both lying next to each other on the bed.

“All I’m saying,” Andrea says, “is that unless it’s affecting how you guys play, it’s nobody’s business but your own. You tell people it’s none of their business when they ask you about your personal life anyway. Just keep telling them that.”

Marcia sighs.

“Besides,” Andrea says. “I thought you and Nicke were dating for most of last season. What’s it really going to change?”

As a matter of course, things actually get better, because Nicke and Marcia aren’t trying to keep from making eye contact with each other. It benefits a lot of them, since Nicke seems less sharp and cutting when he’s getting laid regularly. And actually sleeping with another hockey player pretty much does wonders for her confidence. Nicke knows exactly what she puts her body through for her job, because he does it too, and he doesn’t expect her to be smaller or more delicate or any less tough than a woman over six feet tall in a full contact sport would have to be. She’s not delicate and she never has been, and he doesn’t treat her like he expects her to be.

Andrea still goes to dinner with them on roadies, flirts with both of them shamelessly the same as she does with anyone else. They make it a game to take her to nicer places, so she has to tame her mess of hair and wear something a little nicer than her average game day suits. They realize that they miss her when she’s not there, after she blocks a shot and breaks her hand in February.

They take her somewhere fancy once she’s back, and she’s just happy to be there. They’re all drinking, definitely more than they should. And Andrea’s a little bit tipsy, for sure, when Nicke excuses himself from the table. She leans her head over against Marcia’s shoulder. They’re sitting like that, Marcia’s hand rubbing Andrea’s lower back, when Nicke comes back.

“You know,” Andrea says, turning her empty glass around and around in her hand, “either one of you could have me. Any way you wanted me.”

Marcia freezes, and Nicke’s eyebrows go up. “What?” Nicke asks, so startled it actually falls out in English.

“Like,” Andrea says, straightening up from where she’s lounged against Marcia. “You guys are so - are you not trying to date me? Take me to nice places, buy me dinner, buy me drinks. I’m just saying you don’t have to keep trying. You could just take me back to the hotel room.”

“Oh my God,” Nicke says. Marcia bursts out laughing.

They end up in Nicke’s room back at the hotel, but in spite of the drinks it’s awkward. Marcia’s biggest concern is that Andrea will regret what she’s said, what she wants them to do, even though all of them want to go through with it.

“Are you saying you weren’t trying to date me?” Andrea asks. She kicks her heels off onto the floor and flexes her feet. “Come on, Jojo, I can’t remember the last time I bought dinner.” Nicke’s hand skates underneath the edge of Marcia’s shirt. Because he’s not going to be the idiot that turns down a threesome with two hot chicks, clearly.

“I’m not trying to steal your boyfriend,” Andrea continues. Marcia flinches at hearing Nicke called that, still. “But I also get it if you’re not into girls.” She pushes herself up, her hair already a mess from being sprawled on the bed. “I could watch. Or you could watch?”

“Please stop talking,” Marcia says, kicking her own heels off at the foot of the bed, stretching out slowly onto her stomach on the bed beside Andrea.

“Make me,” Andrea says, childish, her face flushed with heat and alcohol.

So Marcia does.


End file.
